“At the beginning we tried to shake up the traditional hierarchy of news,” says Jean-Guillaume Santi, Snapchat Discover editor at Le Monde. They added funny articles or videos, content in which they thought teenagers would be interested. But then they noticed a drop in ratings. “surprisingly, we did perform better when we were serious about what is important. Trying to be cool when you are an old newspaper like Le Monde – I think sounds vague.”

What you put on Snapchat might be a great story, but it also has to be delivered in the right format and in the language of the audience. Santi manages a team of 6 people. “Two text editors who rewrite articles specifically for Snapchat, two video editors who use the videos of Reuters and other video feeds. This way we can have the main visuals of the news of the day. And we have one motion designer who does the graphic work for our edition.”

“I think this is crucial in a newsroom today,” says Santi. “Every day, try to experiment and invent new stuff and if it doesn’t work just put it aside and focus on something new. Even after being on Snapchat for two years it is sometimes hard to think outside of the box. But this kind of visual platform pushes you to find new ideas every day and create new formats.”

“I think the value Snapchat brings to Le Monde is addressing a radically new audience that didn’t read Le Monde before. I think this is the new generation that we are addressing is used to having the news directly on their newsfeed within social networks.”